s morning. You are
different--yes, you make me feel that I am weak and helpless and that
you can say to me 'come' and 'go' and I must obey. Isn't it odd that
I, who have never known submissiveness, should so suddenly find myself
tyrannized?" she asked, smiling faintly.

"Shall I tell you why you are afraid of me?" he asked.

"You will say it is because I am forgetting to be a Princess."

"No; it is because you no longer look upon me as you did in other
days. It is because I am a possibility, an entity instead of a shadow.
Yesterday you were the Princess and looked down upon the impossible
suitor; to-day you find that you have given yourself to him and that you
do not regard the barrier as insurmountable. You were not timid until
you found your power to resist gone. Today you admit that I may hope,
and in doing so you open a gate through the walls of your pride and
prejudice that can never be closed against the love within and the love
without. You are afraid of me because I am no longer a dream, but a
reality. Am I not right, Yetive?"

She looked out over the hazy, moonlit park.

"Yesterday I might have disputed all you say; to-day I can deny
nothing."

Leaning upon the railing, they fell into a silent study of the parade
ground and its strollers. Their thoughts were not of the walkers and
chatterers, nor of the music, nor of the night. They were of the day to
come.

"I shall never forget how you said 'because I love him,' this morning,
sweetheart," said Lorry, betraying his reflections. "You defied the
whole world in those four words. They were worth dying for."

"How could I help it? You must not forget that you had just leaped into
the lion's den defenseless, because you loved me. Could I deny you then?
Until that moment I had been the Princess adamant; in a second's time
you swept away every safeguard, every battlement, and I surrendered
as only a woman can. But it really sounded shocking, didn't it? So
theatrical."

"Don't look so distressed about it, dear. You couldn't help it,
remember," he said, approvingly.

"Ach, I dread to-morrow's ordeal!" she said, and he felt the arm that
touched his own tremble. "What will they say? What will they, do?"

"To-morrow will tell. It means a great deal to both of us. If they will
not submit--what then?"

"What then--what then?" she murmured, faintly.

Across the parade, coming from the direction of the fountain, Harry
Anguish and Dagmar were slowly walking. Th